The Basic Method of Meditation

23 Pages·2005·1.01 MB·English

by  Ajahn Brahmavamso

The
Basic Method
of
Meditation

Ajahn Brahmavamso
This book may be copied or reprint for free distribution without permission from the publisher.
Otherwise all rights reserved.
October 2005
Contents

Part 1 ............................................
Sustained attention on the present moment

Part 2 .............................................
Silent awareness of the present moment

Silent present moment awareness of the breath

Full sustained attention on the breath

Part 3 ..........................................
Full sustained attention on the beautiful breath


Experiencing the beautiful Nimitta


First Jhana

NAMO TASSA BHAGAVATO ARAHATO SAMMA SAMBUDDHASSA
NAMO TASSA BHAGAVATO ARAHATO SAMMA SAMBUDDHASSA
NAMO TASSA BHAGAVATO ARAHATO SAMMA SAMBUDDHASSA

PART 1

“The goal of this meditation is the beautiful silence,
stillness and clarity of mind” '

M
ditation is the way to achieve letting go. In meditation one lets go of the
complex world outside in order to reach the serene world inside. In all types of mysticism,
in many traditions, this is known as the path to the pure and powerful mind. The
experience of this pure mind, released from the world, is very wonderful and blissful.
Often with meditation there will be some hard work at the beginning, but be willing to
bear that hard work knowing that it will lead you to experience some very beautiful and
meaningful states. They will be well worth the effort! It is a law of nature that without effort one
does not make progress. Whether one is a layperson or a monk, without effort one gets nowhere,
in meditation or in anything.
Effort alone, though, is not sufficient. The effort needs to be skilful. This means
directing your energy just at the right places and sustaining it there until its task is
completed. Skilful effort neither hinders nor disturbs you, instead it produces the beautiful
peace of deep meditation.
In order to know where your effort should be directed, you must have a clear
understanding of the goal of meditation. The goal of this meditation is the beautiful
silence, stillness and clarity of mind. If you can understand that goal then the place to
apply your effort and the means to achieve the goal become very clear.
The effort is directed to letting go, to developing a mind that inclines to abandoning. One
of the many simple but profound statements of the Lord Buddha is that a meditator whose mind
inclines to abandoning, easily achieves Samadhi. Such a meditator gains these states of inner bliss
almost automatically. What the Lord Buddha is saying is that the major cause for attaining deep
meditation, for reaching these powerful states, is the willingness to abandon, to let go and to
renounce.
During meditation, we should not develop a mind which accumulates and holds
on to things, but instead we develop a mind which is willing to let go of things, to let go
of burdens. Outside of meditation we have to carry the burden of our many duties, like so
many heavy suitcases, but within the period of meditation so much baggage is
unnecessary. So, in meditation, see how much baggage you can unload. Think of these
things as burdens, heavy weights pressing upon you. Then you have the right attitude for
letting go of these things, abandoning them freely without looking back. This effort, this
attitude, this movement of mind that inclines to giving up, is what will lead you into deep
meditation. Even during the beginning stages of this meditation, see if you can generate
the energy of renunciation, the willingness to give things away, and little by little the letting
go will occur. As you give things away in your mind you will feel much lighter, unburdened and
free. In the way of meditation, this abandoning of things occurs in stages, step by step.
You may go through the initial stages quickly if you wish, but be very careful if
you do so. Sometimes, when you pass through the initial steps too quickly, you find the
preparatory work has not been completed. It is like trying to build a town house on a very
weak and rushed foundation. The structure goes up very quickly, but it comes down very
quickly as well! So you are wise to spend a lot of time on the foundations, and on the
'first storeys' as well, making the groundwork well done, strong and firm. Then when you
proceed to the higher storeys, the bliss states of meditation, they too are stable and firm.
In the way that I teach meditation, I like to begin at the very simple stage of
giving up the baggage of past and future. Sometimes you may think that this is such an
easy thing to do, that it is too basic. However, if you give it your full effort, not running
ahead to the higher stages of meditation until you have properly reached the first goal of
sustained attention on the present moment, then you will find later on that you have
established a very strong foundation on which to build the higher stages.
Abandoning the past means not even thinking about your work, your family, your
commitments, your responsibilities, your history, the good or bad times you had as a child .." you
abandon all past experiences by showing no interest in them at all. You become someone who has
no history during the time that you meditate. You do not even think about where you are from,
where you were born, who your parents were or what your upbringing was like. All of that history
is renounced in meditation. In this way, everyone here on the retreat becomes equal, just a
meditator. It becomes unimportant how many years you have been meditating, whether you are an
old hand or a beginner. If you abandon all that history then we are all equal and free. We are
freeing ourselves of some of these concerns, perceptions and thoughts that limit us and which stop
us from developing the peace born of letting go. So every 'part' of your history you finally let go
of, even the history of what has happened to you so far in this retreat, even the memory of what
happened to you just a moment ago! In this way, you carry no burden from the past into the
present. Whatever has just happened, you are no longer interested in it and you let it go. You do
not allow the past to reverberate in your mind.
I describe this as developing your mind like a padded cell! When any experience,
perception or thought hits the wall of the 'padded cell' , it does not bounce back-again. It just sinks
into the padding and stops right there. Thus we do not allow the past to echo in our consciousness,
certainly not the past of yesterday and all that time before, because we are developing the mind
inclined to letting go, giving away and unburdening.
Some people have the view that if they take up the past for contemplation they
can somehow learn from it and solve the problems of the past. However, you should
understand that when you gaze at the past, you invariably look through distorted lenses.
Whatever you think it was like, in truth it was not quite like that! This is why people have
arguments about what actually happened, even a few moments ago. It is well known to
police who investigate traffic accidents that even though the accident may have happened
only half an hour ago, two different eyewitnesses, both completely honest, will give
different accounts. Our memory is untrustworthy. If you consider just how unreliable
memory is, then you do not put value on thinking about the past. Then you can let it go.
You can bury it, just as you bury a person who has died. You place them in a coffin then bury
it, or cremate it, and it is done with, finished. Do not linger on the past. Do not continue to carry
the coffins of dead moments on your head! If you do, then you are weighing yourself down with
heavy burdens which do not really belong to you. Let all of the past go and you have the ability to
be free in the present moment.
As for the future, the anticipations, fears, plans, and expectations-let all of that go
too. The Lord Buddha once said about the future 'whatever you think it will be, it will
always be something different' ! This future is known to the wise as uncertain, unknown
and so unpredictable. It is often complete stupidity to anticipate the future, and always a
great waste of your time to think of the future in meditation.
When you work with your mind, you find that the mind is so strange. It can do some
wonderful and unexpected things. It is very common for meditators who are having a difficult
time, who are not getting very peaceful, to sit there thinking 'Here we go again, another hour of
frustration'. Even though they begin thinking like that, anticipating failure, something strange
happens and they get into a very peaceful meditation.
Recently I heard of one man on his first ten-day retreat. After the first day his
body was hurting so much he asked to go home. The teacher said, 'Stay one more day and
the pain will disappear, I promise' . So he stayed another day, the pain got worse so he
wanted to go home again. The teacher repeated 'just one more day, the pain will go'. He
stayed for a third day and the pain was even worse. For each of nine days, in the evening
he would go to the teacher and, in great pain, ask to go home and the teacher would say,
'Just one more day and the pain will disappear'. It was completely beyond his expectations,
that on the final day when he started the first sit of the morning, the pain did disappear! It
did not come back. He could sit for long periods with no pain at all! He was amazed at
how wonderful is this mind and how it can produce such unexpected results. So, you don't
know about the future. It can be so strange, even weird, completely beyond whatever you expect.
Experiences like this give you the wisdom and courage to abandon all thoughts about the future,
and all expectation as well.
When you're meditating and thinking, 'How many more minutes are there to go? How much
longer have I to endure all of this?', then that is just wandering off into the future again.
The pain could just disappear in a moment. The next moment might be the tree one. You
just cannot anticipate what is going to happen.
When on retreat, after you have been meditating for many sessions, you may
sometimes think that none of those meditations have been any good. In the next
meditation session you sit down and everything becomes so peaceful and easy. You think
'Wow! Now I can meditate!', but the next meditation is again awful. What's going on here?
The first meditation teacher I had told me something that then sounded quite strange. He
said that there is no such thing as a bad meditation! He was right. All those meditations which you
call bad, frustrating and not meeting your expectations, all those meditations are where you do the
hard work for your 'pay cheque' ...
It is like a person who goes to work all day Monday and gets no money at the end of the
day. 'What am I doing this for?', he thinks. He works all day Tuesday and still gets nothing.
Another bad day. All day Wednesday, all day Thursday, and still nothing to show for all the hard
work. That's four bad days in a row. Then along comes Friday, he does exactly the same work as
before and at the end of the day the boss gives him a pay cheque. 'Wow! Why can't every day be a
pay day?!'
Why can't every meditation be 'pay day'? Now, do you understand the simile? It is
in the difficult meditations that you build up your credit, where you build up the causes
for success. While working for peace in the hard meditations, you build up your strength,
the momentum for peace. Then when there's enough credit of good qualities, the mind
goes into a good meditation and it feels like 'pay day'. It is in the bad meditations that you
do most of the work.
At a recent retreat that I gave in Sydney, during interview time, a lady told me that she
had been angry with me all day, but for two different reasons. In her early meditations she was
having a difficult time and was angry with me for not ringing the bell to end the meditation early
enough. In the later meditations she got into a beautiful peaceful state and was angry with me for
ringing the bell too soon. The sessions were all the same length, exactly one hour. You just can't
win as a teacher, ringing the bell!
This is what happens when you go anticipating the future, thinking, 'How many
more minutes until the bell goes?' That is where you torture, yourself, where you pick up
a heavy burden that is none of your business. So be very careful not to pick up the heavy
suitcase of 'How many more minutes are there to go?' or 'What should I do next?' If that is
what you are thinking, then you are not paying attention to what is happening now. You
are not doing the meditation. You have lost the plot and are asking for trouble.
In this stage of the meditation keep your attention right in the present moment, to
the point where you don't even know what day it is or what time it is-morning?
afternoon?--don't know! All you know is what moment it is-right now! In this way you
arrive at this beautiful monastic time scale where you are just meditating in the moment,
not aware of how many minutes have gone or how many remain, not even remembering what day
it is.
Once, as a young monk in Thailand, I had actually forgotten what year it was! It is
marvellous living in that realm that is timeless, a realm so much more free than the time-
driven world we usually have to live in. In the timeless realm, you experience this
moment, just as all wise beings have been experiencing this same moment for thousands
of years. It has always been just like this, no different. You have come into the reality of
'now'.
The reality of now is magnificent and awesome. When you have abandoned all
past and all future, it is as if you have come alive. You are here, you are mindful. This is
the first stage of the meditation, just this mindfulness sustained only in the present.
Reaching here, you have done a great deal. You have let go of the first burden which stops deep
meditation. So put forth a lot of effort to reach this first stage until it is strong, firm and well
established. Next we will refine the present moment awareness into the second stage of the
meditation - silent awareness of the present moment.
PART 2

'Silence is so much more productive of
wisdom and clarity than thinking. '

I
n part 1, I outlined the goal of this meditation, which is the beautiful silence, stillness
and clarity of mind, pregnant with the most profound of insights. Then I pointed out the
underlying theme which runs like an unbroken thread throughout all meditation, that is
the letting go of material and mental burdens. Lastly, in Part 1, I described at length the
practice which leads to what I call the first stage of this meditation, and that first stage is
attained when the meditator comfortably abides in the present moment for long, unbroken
periods of time. I made the point that 'The reality of now is magnificent and awesome...
Reaching, here you have done a great deal. You have let go of the first burden which
stops deep meditation.' But having achieved so much, one should go further into the even
more beautiful and truthful silence of the mind.
It is helpful, here, to clarify the difference between silent awareness of the present
moment and thinking about it. The simile of watching a tennis match on TV is informative. When
watching such a match, you may notice that, in fact, there are two matches occurring
simultaneously-there is the match that you see on the screen, and there is the match that you hear
described by the commentator. Indeed, if an Australian is playing a New Zealander, then the
commentary from the Australian or New Zealand presenter is likely to be much different from
what actually occurred! Commentary is often biased. In this simile, watching the screen with no
commentary stands for silent awareness in meditation, paying attention to the commentary stands
for thinking about it. You should realize that you are much closer to Truth when you observe
without commentary, when you experience just the silent awareness of the present moment.
Sometimes it is through the inner commentary that we think we know the world. Actually,
that inner speech does not know the world at all! It is the inner speech that weaves the delusions
that cause suffering. It is the inner speech that causes us to be angry with those we make our
enemies, and to have dangerous attachments to those we make our loved ones. Inner speech
causes all of life's problems. It constructs fear and guilt. It creates anxiety and depression. It
builds these illusions as surely as the skilful commentator on TV can manipulate an audience to
create anger or tears. So if you seek for Truth, you should value silent awareness, considering it
more important, when meditating, than any thought whatsoever.
It is the high value that one gives to one's thoughts that is the major obstacle to
silent awareness. Carefully removing the importance one gives to one's thinking and